Le Chic En Rose

I’ve blogged about Perth Zoo before (see here) but thought the following photos were worth sharing.

We’ve been having a lovely Indian summer for the past week or so here in Perth and it seemed a good opportunity for an outing with our daughter and granddaughters.

The deciduous trees have gradually turned from green to beautiful autumnal shades of russets and golds over the past few weeks and the pathway leading to the Zoo entrance looked lovely. We also have a couple of plane trees in our front garden and I love seeing the gradual change of the seasons.

We usually try to visit the zoo in the afternoon as the crowds tend to die down somewhat (we were visiting during school holidays) and we’ve found from past experience that the animals seem to be more active at that time of day. Even so, we were treated to an unexpected surprise in the lion enclosure (well not actually in it but rather looking through the glass). Perth Zoo just has 3 lions now – a pair of lionesses, twin sisters Makeba and Uzuri who are 8 years old and a 9 year old male called Jelani (see here) who arrived in Perth late last year from a South Australian Safari park to join the lioness sisters.

The name Jelani means “mighty” in Swahili – quite fitting as he weighs 195 kgs and has a magnificent mane! Apparently he made the 2,750 kms journey by plane to his new home – that would have been an interesting experience for the baggage handlers!

We hadn’t seen him when we last visited the zoo in January (he had only recently made his public debut) and had no expectations so we were initially pleased that we had such a good view of the lionesses.

It soon became clear what had attracted the girls’ attention as suddenly just to the side of our viewing spot, out from his neighbouring enclosure strutted Jelani stopping for a little while to have a look at his admiring human audience. He then sauntered off evidently trying to impress Makeba and Uzuri (though I did read later that he is in fact a non-breeding male). After a while he strolled off back to the other side of the lion enclosure.

I couldn’t choose between all the photos we took so please excuse the Jelani “spam” (and the reflection on some of the shots which were taken through glass)!

After the initial excitement, Makeba and Uzuri resumed their afternoon siesta.

I’m not an expert on animal husbandry but Perth Zoo explains that their lion enclosure is set up in this way as “the non-breeding male is the perfect match to keep the pair company in a social structure that mimics the wild, improving the wellbeing of the big cats”.

All in all we had an excellent afternoon. Here are a few photos of other favourites, Permai the Asian Elephant, the Galapagos Tortoise, the mischievous meerkats and the Bolivian Squirrel Monkeys who kept us entertained with their antics!

I’ll leave the last word to Jelani!

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